Let there be mystery...

There is an elegant and powerful atheism put forward by great thinkers such as Colin McGinn and Daniel Dennett, and I insist that their arguments be firmly set on the table and included in all religious discussions. But the common garden variety atheism you're bound to run into often has a whiff of bogusness. The problem with most self-proclaimed atheists is that they replace the word "god" with the word "science" and think they've solved the puzzle. When science becomes just another faith-based system to combat our fear of the unknown, the religious impulse seems all the more attractive. Is it possible that most of the atheists you meet are people who, for one reason or another, need to put themselves first?